It Started With A Fall
by rosaisanerd
Summary: As he watched his best friend tumble towards the rain-soaked city pavement, his coat – almost as famous as the detective himself – billowed out above him, almost like a living thing, reaching out to grasp at the life he could have had. And John had stood there. Hand outstretched. And he had done nothing.


Disclaimer: I do not own, nor do I profit from.

Chapter 1

It started with a fall.

No, _the _fall.

The one that destroyed his life and ripped his heart in two.

That fall.

As he watched his best friend tumble towards the rain-soaked city pavement, his coat – almost as famous as the detective himself – billowed out above him, almost like a living thing, reaching out to grasp at the life he could have had.

And John had stood there.

Hand outstretched.

And he had done nothing.

It was all his fault, he had realised that night when he at last returned to 221B, head bent over his glass of beer. Tears rolled down his weathered cheeks and into his drink, flavouring it with regret. All his fault. He had waited until Sherlock hit the road, that brilliant mind silenced forever, before finally coming to his senses and running over. If he had ignored Sherlock and gone to him as he fell, he could have done something. Softened the blow. Maybe even taken the whole impact. Anything would have been better than standing there like an _idiot _while his best friend – his best friend, his only true friend in all the world – plummeted to the ground. He had really, honestly thought that they would be growing old together. The detective and his blogger. They slotted together like two pieces of a jigsaw (it sounded so clichéd, but now he was the one saying it - and it was about Sherlock, so it was okay), their completely separate lives merging to become one. They had each given up a little part of themselves to the other. They belonged together.

But it was all wrong now.  
The detective was gone, but his blogger remained.

It just didn't fit, didn't make sense in John's mind. He quite simply could not imagine life without Sherlock. He had managed, for a while, leaving the house rarely. He was teaching himself to play the violin. Sherlock had left some sheet music, and he knew what it was supposedto sound like.

But it didn't fit. Not without Sherlock's tall frame silhouetted in the left-hand window, arm working diligently away at the bow. He hadn't just _played_ the violin. Somehow he had managed to play John's heart as well.  
Yes, he had managed. Broken and alone, working his weary way throught every new situation, taking each day as he had the last, he had managed. And then - a year or so after the fall - the sightings had begun.

Glimpses.

Out of the corner of his eye.

A prominent cheekbone in a pale face, a stubborn curk making a desperate bid for freedom over a porcelain brow. And that _goddamn _coat. He saw it everywhere. On the tube, at crowded bus stops, whipping round the corner of a supermarket aisle – and of course, when he looked again, there was never anything there. His therapist informed him that it wasjust wishful thinking, that he was missing Sherlock so badly that his mind was tricking him into thinking he'd seen him.

Missing.

It didn't even come close to expressing how John felt about Sherlock's… death. His death. He had to get used to it sometime. He still stumbled over the word, when people asked about his 'clever friend' or his 'roommate, you know, the tall , quiet one.' Dead. Death dead dead death death. Gone. No longer alive. Irreparably broken.

No, missing most certainly did not cover it. Every time he thought about his flatmate (ex-flatmate) (shut up), his throat emitted an unspeakably odd sound and his stomach constricted painfully. More often than not he would end up crying. It had alarmed him at first, the violence with which the sobs wracked his body. He would sit on the sofa at 221B for hours, just shaking as the hot tears spilled over his eyelashes and made their way onto his flushed cheeks.

Yes, it had shocked him in the beginning. Frightened him, even.

But he was used to it now.


End file.
